Amid Division, a March in Washington Seeks to Bring Women Together

A movement is growing to bring together women across race, creed and political beliefs by luring them off social media and arranging for them to meet in person.

It’s a nice idea, but there’s one catch: The Women’s March on Washington is being organized on Facebook, the nation’s preferred platform to battle over race, gender, politics and just about everything else.

The timing of the event, which organizers began planning the morning after the election but are careful not to call a protest, is aimed at the coming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump. More than 100,000 people have said on Facebook that they will travel to the capital to participate. The plan is to walk from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House on Jan. 21, 2017, the morning after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

“We’re doing it his very first day in office because we are making a statement,” one organizer, Breanne Butler, said. “The marginalized groups you attacked during your campaign? We are here and we are watching. And, like, ‘Welcome to the White House.’ ”

Since Election Day, there has been momentum around supporting groups that are opposed to Mr. Trump’s espoused views on women and minority groups. Nonprofit organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union, have reported a surge in donations after the election. But the election taught Americans that women are deeply divided along party lines, education level and race: 53 percent of white women voted for Mr. Trump, according to exit poll data.

On the march group’s Facebook page, it is easy to see how complicated the idea of the “women’s vote,” an already mythological concept, has become, and how difficult it might be for organizers to fulfill their aim of gathering women who remain fiercely divided on reproductive rights, gun control, same-sex marriage and immigration, among other issues.

Not everyone on the page believes, for instance, that Hillary Clinton would have made a good president, or that Stephen K. Bannon, a chief strategist under Mr. Trump, holds divisive views about minorities. Debates over both have sprung up in recent days. Bob Bland, one of the march organizers, said in an email that organizers in Maryland had to change a Facebook page from public to private to protect the safety of women who want to attend.

Evvie Harmon, a yoga teacher from Greenville, S.C., who is helping state-based efforts to organize for the march, said the group had nixed a possible idea for a slogan — “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights” — because it was something that Mrs. Clinton once said.

“This is not an anti-Trump protest,” Ms. Harmon said. “This is the reaction of women and minorities across the world who are very disturbed by the rhetoric that was said over the last year and a half.”

Aside from dueling political views, organizers are trying to take feedback from a cacophony of voices in real time as they try to assemble a network of state volunteers, plan programming and arrange transportation and lodging for the event. Ms. Butler, a chef who is organizing the event in her spare time, said the march had no official means of funding yet.

There are women on the page who have said that the march is not inclusive enough, and that they don’t want an event organized by white women. Ms. Butler acknowledged the criticism but stressed that the women who are organizing are from different racial and religious backgrounds.

(There was even controversy over the original name: Organizers have changed the name from Million Woman March to the Women’s March on Washington because observers took issue with the fact that the original name echoed a black women’s march held in Philadelphia in 1997.)

Ms. Butler, 27, said the greater concern would be helping local groups raise money to help women who can’t afford to travel to Washington.

“The reality is that it’s incredibly expensive to fly to D.C. on inauguration weekend,” Ms. Butler said. “We don’t want only an upper-middle class of people at this march because no one else can afford to go.”

Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, 34, who plans to help sign up attendees by visiting churches, synagogues and community centers in New York City, said she had been working to include all types of people — including those who have not been on Facebook lately.

“I am a woman of color and I am an immigrant,” said Ms. St. Bernard-Jacobs, who lives in Brooklyn. She said of the march: “For me, it has been completely inclusive.”

This is all plenty of pressure for a days-old grass-roots movement without a concrete path to funding itself, but organizers are optimistic as they look ahead to January.

According to Ms. Butler, the group’s request for a permit to march is still pending. On Friday, Michael Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, said in an email that the group’s request to march is one of at least 13 requests currently under review for areas the agency administers in the nation’s capital. Those also include rallies and demonstrations.

Mr. Litterst said the Park Service was also reviewing five requests for official inauguration events.

Christopher Mele contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Amid Divisions, a March Seeks to Unite Women. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe